It’s Just Not Your Day — A Demotivational Calendar

It’s late October, and here in the northeast of England it definitely feels like autumn outside. The sun is setting earlier, the air is crisp and cool, and leaves are crunching underfoot. The year is winding down slowly, and 2018 is on the horizon. And you know what that means — new year, new calendar!

This year I worked on a couple of pages for a funny and unusual calendar, entitled It’s Just Not Your Day, a Demotivational Calendar, made by Workman publishing. It’s a spoof of those calendars with hand-lettered and illustrated motivational quotes for each month, instead featuring quotes that would be more at home in a millennial’s text message. I was asked to illustrate “Can You Not Though” and “Leave Me Alone, K”, which I had fun turning in to hand-lettered illustrations with flourishes and color palettes that belie their snarky sentiments, as you can see below.

They’re months April and July on the calendar. The rest of the months are illustrated by other hand-lettering experts and it’s a fun roundup of styles and palettes. A big thanks to art director Becky Terhune for hiring me for this project, she was a total breeze to work with! If you like your calendars a bit tongue-in-cheek, then this should be hanging on your wall for 2018. You can buy it on Amazon here (or here if you’re in the UK). Thanks for reading and have a lovely autumn!

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5 Responses

I’m glad your daughter likes the calendar so much! This is the second or third question I’ve had about whether there will be another one. I’m only one of a few illustrators that the publisher hired to illustrate quotes for it, so I’m not really sure if the publisher will be doing another one for next year, but if I find anything out I will let you know! Thanks!

This is my daughter’s favorite calendar and I have bought it for her the past two years of high school. It is a tradition my mother started with me. She would give me a calendar every Christmas, I started giving my children one every year, but would let them choose. She found this one and loved it. Please let me know if you make another one.

Hello!

I’m professional illustrator Anni Betts. I create vibrant, cheerful drawings for books, magazines, advertising, greeting cards, and more. I love making the world a more colorful place, and specialize in drawing animals, plants, people, and lettering. Originally from Illinois, I now live in the UK in the historic city of Durham, England.